


Take Me Home (Country Roads)

by Pollydoodles



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7379617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barton finds a young man hiding out in his barn and can't help but extend him an offer to stay. James knows little to nothing about farming, and he's clearly got a complicated past that Clint's not sure he wants to dive into, but can life at the Barton homestead bring the peace James didn't know he was looking for?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Me Home (Country Roads)

In his line of work, the line of work at least that took him far away from the farm and his family and into conflict and gun fights, Barton wasn't unused to finding battered men wearing blood soaked and torn shirts: but even he had to admit that it was less usual to find one in his barn.

He was dark haired; wearing it long, shaggy and in what Laura would no doubt consider desperate need of a tidy up. He had a tattered back pack strapped across a broad chest, and what was probably every item of clothing he owned on his body. Though built big, he was skinny and there was a hollow to his cheeks that told Barton a few things about how long he’d been hiding out in other people’s property. 

“You hiding out in my barn for a reason?” He said mildly, one hand on the barn door and his mind half on where he could get at a bow and quiver easily should this situation turn south. The lad in front of him didn’t look in any decent shape to outrun him, even if he just took a rock and aimed that instead. 

The kid looked up at him with brilliantly blue eyes and Barton realised that, though he was younger, this wasn’t a kid at all but a man in his own right. A man, if he wasn’t much mistaken, that had seen action and plenty of it. His eyes narrowed and his grip on the wooden barn door tightened slightly. His thoughts turned to Laura and the kids, currently in the kitchen eating breakfast.

"I can work," The man said urgently. "Whatever you need."

Barton looked at him critically. "You worked a farm before?"

"Yes." 

The answer came quickly, too quickly, and it was a fact also that Barton was used to knowing when someone was telling him the truth or not. This man was not telling him the truth but all the same there was a desperation in his blue eyes that spoke of a truth, albeit not the one he'd been asking for. Barton bit at his lower lip and wondered if he was really going to do the thing he’d kind of promised Laura he wouldn’t do any more. 

“You got a name, kid?” 

There was a hesitation, another one, and this time Barton could practically see the cogs whirring as the man tried to work out whether it was better to give a false name or not. He wasn’t exactly expecting the guy to tell him his real name, and therefore was mildly surprised when he did. 

“James.” The dip to his eyes, the way that his teeth tugged at his lower lip before he fixed once again on Barton told the older man that this was indeed his real name. Maybe not a name he’d gone by in a while, but his name all the same. 

“Well, James,” Barton said, shifting back on his heel and squinting up at the sun that was beginning to peep over the mountains behind the house. “I reckon you got yaself a job.”

\-----

“He’s lost, Laur.” Bartons said, resting his head on the bannister railing as he looked up at her from the bottom of the stairs. His wife threw him a look that spoke volumes, more than she would ever need to actually say to him, from the top of the stairs and opened the airing cupboard. 

“I don’t know what that kid’s runnin’ from, but it’s something big.” He continued, making his slow way up the wooden stairs, skipping the middle stair that squeaked something awful if you rested your full weight on it. He made a mental note to get to that soon. Next week, at least. 

Laura also noted the squeak, from where her head was stuck in the airing cupboard, and she recalled that her husband had been fixing to sort it for the last two years. 

“You think he’s safe?” Laura asked, turning serious brown eyes on her husband as she paused in folding clothes. Barton considered the young man he’d found in the barn. He was almost certainly military; lord knew Clint had seen enough in his lifetime to spot those traits a mile off. He thought about the serious blue eyes that held the thousand yard stare he’d come to expect from people who’d seen too much at too tender an age. If he didn’t know any better, he’d’ve said that there was something of Natasha in those eyes. Or a little Steve, when the Captain dropped his guard and forgot that other people were watching. 

“Yeah.” He said finally. “Yeah, I do.”

Laura smiled, a soft slow smile - the one that took the corners of her mouth upwards, slow like molasses and just as sweet - the one that Clint had only ever seen her use on him. The one that always brought him home, like a signal he couldn’t resist. The one that had captured him body and soul at seventeen. He’d never looked at another girl again. 

“You know, it’s usually the wife who brings home waifs and strays,” She said teasingly, shaking out an old shirt of his that had seen far better days even before he’d gotten his grubby hands on it for farmwork. “And even then it’s supposed to be a three-legged dog or something.”

“Hey, at least this one isn’t a Russian assassin, huh?” He said, laughing, and snuggled into her from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist and letting his chin rest on her shoulder as she rolled her head back against him, smiling. 

\------

They were less than a week into James’ stay when Barton realised what he’d suspected the moment he’d first laid eyes on him - that the closest the kid had ever been to a farm had to have been a petting zoo. And a shit one at that. Still, he tried hard, and harder still to conceal his surprise at what he was faced with. Didn’t always work out for him. 

“What the hell is that?” James reeled back beside him. Barton bit back a laugh. 

“That, son, is a bull.”

“Why the heck is it so big?” The alarm in his voice was only matched by the way he scooted backwards faster than if a rattlesnake had popped up in front of him. Barton couldn’t hold it back any longer. He laughed, clutching at his stomach and letting it roll out of him. The bull huffed, swinging a large head from left to right, steam billowing from its wet nostrils as it eyed them suspiciously. 

“S’hybrid, kid. Half cattle, half-bison. Big bastard meant for the meat markets, y’know?” Clint slapped a hand on the beast’s wide rump and the bull grunted, swishing his tail side to side in an irritated movement. James, apparently gathering his nerves, stepped up to Barton’s side, though the older man noticed with a snort that the kid’s blue eyes kept a wary gaze on the animal in front of them. 

“Come on,” Barton nudged the man beside him in the ribs. “He ain’t gonna feed his’self.”

\------

He refused, politely, to sleep in the house. 

“I get nightmares.” He said, when pressed, putting his hands up with palms out and shaking his head lightly. “Don’t wanna scare your kids.” Barton thought privately that it would take a lot more than hollering and shouting in the dead of night to scare his kids, who’d been brought up to be made of far tougher stuff than that, but appreciated the sentiment nonetheless. 

“If you’re okay, I’ll take the haybarn.” 

Barton shrugged. If the kid was adamant that’s what he wanted, then so be it. No skin off his nose, although he’d likely cop an earful off Laura later on when she heard about it. He dragged out blankets, old and patched but clean enough, and together they stuffed straw into a mattress shape and hauled it into the loft over the haybarn. 

Night after night James disappeared into the haybarn when it was time to turn in, and if some nights Barton caught a howl on the wind that wasn’t the cry of the wolf singing a love song to the moon, he never commented on it. 

\------

The kids loved him, for all he had shied away from them, in the beginning. 

Lila had practically forced herself on him the first night he’d arrived, called for dinner at Laura’s insistence, uncomfortable and shifting from one foot to the other at the front door. She’d climbed right into his lap as he’d sat on the couch, showing him drawing after drawing that she’d produced. James had made polite noises at each one in turn, and Laura had nodded approvingly across the kitchen counter at Clint. 

Cooper, a little older and fast approaching his teens, a little too fast if Barton had any say in it, was harder won over, though not by much. He’d been wary, keeping his distance, until he could take it no longer and invited James to the small shooting range he’d had set up the past sixth months. Armed with an air rifle, all that Laura would allow him to have - under strict adult supervision - he shot tin can after tin can set up precariously on the rickety wooden fence twenty foot away. 

Barton thought that the breeze created by the pellets whistling past them did as much as anything else to knock the tins to the ground, but his son was pleased at any rate. 

Offering the rifle over to the quiet man stood beside him, Cooper looked up as James took ahold of it, turning it over and over in his hands before handing it back with a small shake of his head. 

“It’s a neat little rifle, but I’m no marksman.” He’d said carefully when he passed it back, and Barton had known instantly that it was a lie by the look that had crossed his deep blue eyes as he’d held the gun, the tiny hesitation before he’d given it back. “Wouldn’t wanna muddy your scoresheet.” 

Barton had stepped in then, slinging his old bow into place and taking out three tin cans with a single arrow, making the kids scream in delight and beg for more tricks. He indulged in a few more, glad of the respite from fence building, until Laura had come to find to where her cooking apples had disappeared. Finding one balanced on Cooper’s head and Clint taking careful aim from twenty feet away did not earn any of them a place in her good books. 

Nate, still small, chubby and playful, reached up insistent arms to the man who appeared above him and would not let up until he was swung up into hesitant arms. Arms that held him awkwardly and with little confidence as Nate smirked and gurgled, unconcerned at the man who would clearly rather not have an armful of toddler, tugging at hair longer than his father wore his own and finding it inherently interesting to do so. 

Even the dogs would fall in line with his step as he crossed the yard in the morning, heading for the outside shower Barton had long since contemplated doing away with. Lucky loved everyone unconditionally, Clint had never seen a dog like it, but Skye, the collie, was far warier of strangers and still stuck loyally to James’ side whenever he appeared on the horizon. 

The man had a low word and a gentle twist to the ears for the dogs when they approached him, tails wagging hard and tongues panting as they grinned up at him; before loping easily at his side as he crossed the yard with purpose. 

\------

“S’gonna get hot out.” Barton remarked as James appeared from the barn. The dark haired man was wearing a long sleeve shirt and a glove on his left hand, which couldn’t be comfortable even then as the sun was starting to rise over the mountain range, let alone when the temperature climbed in a few hours. James shrugged, apparently unconcerned, and fell into step with him. 

“Look, man…” Barton trailed off and his feet followed his words until he’d come to a stop and was facing James. “You don’t gotta feel uncomfortable for my benefit.” He gestured awkwardly towards the other man’s left arm and briefly wished that it was his wife having this conversation. She always seemed to know what best to say. Clint preferred to let the snap and twang of a bowstring to do his talking for him, usually. 

James gave him a sidelong look before answering. 

“S’not pretty.”

“Neither am I, dude.” Barton laughed and, after a moment, James joined in with a small huff of laughter that was almost more an exhalation of air. 

He took a breath and shrugged off the glove, revealing fingers that glinted and caught the sun. Barton’s eyebrows shot upwards. Whatever he might have been expecting, it wasn’t that. James flexed his hand and held it up higher, inviting inspection. Despite himself, despite the voice in the back of his head that sounded an awful lot like Laura and said it wasn’t polite to stare, Clint leaned forward for a better look. 

“That Stark tech?” He said, with interest, reminding himself at the last moment that whilst he might have been invited to look in not so many words, he hadn’t been asked to touch. His hand twitched at his side, longing to slide a finger along the metal plates he could see, figure out how it went together. 

James jerked back at his words. 

“No.” He said shortly, voice sharp as he spoke. “Not - not that. Something, uh, something else.” He was looking to pull the glove back on and, whilst Barton assumed the hand didn’t sweat, he still wanted the guy to feel comfortable. He put a hand up to cover James’ other hand, the flesh and blood version, to stay his movement. 

“I meant what I said, kid.” Barton said in a firm voice. “You don’t gotta hide nothing, not around here.” James gave him a long, hard look; one that Clint knew meant he was being sized up - weighed and measured. He wondered if he would be found wanting. He met the stare with a simple, friendly gaze; waiting on the kid to make his decision on his own time. 

After what felt like an eternity but must have been only seconds, James took a step back and hauled off his sweatshirt, already dark around the armpits at this early hour. Barton hadn’t realised the metal stretched all the way up, joining in a way that looked both painful and awkward to the flesh around his shoulder. He felt a brief pass of pity for the kid, before he blinked the feeling away. He still didn’t know the other man that well, not yet and possibly not ever, but Barton knew himself he wouldn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him in the same position. 

“That’s some serious kit.” He said instead, and clapped James on the shoulder, the flesh and blood version, quirking his mouth up into a grin and turning away to start walking again. He felt rather than saw the other man’s stare that followed him, before he too started walking. 

\------

“You know, I hear a trace of Brooklyn in that accent of yours.” Barton said, using his knife to whittle a pointed end to the post he was planning on sinking into the ground. 

James looked up at him, blue eyes wide and open, pausing in his own work as he gazed up. Barton could see a slight hint of panic in those blue eyes but chose to ignore it. Let the kid keep his secrets, he thought. Lord above knows he’d got shit all else to his name. 

“You’re a long way from home.” He remarked instead, voice even and willing to let the other man take what he wanted from that statement. 

James laughed, and Barton could hear a tinge of bitterness that coloured the edges of it. “Ain’t that the truth.” He said contemplatively. “Not sure I know what home is anymore.” He murmured into his chest, after a pause. 

“Home?” Barton shook his head solemnly. “Home’s what you make it.” He sat back on his haunches and scratched the back of his neck. “Those four walls over there?” He pointed with the knife towards the house, and a grin crooked the edges of his mouth. “That’s just bricks and mortar; wood and nails. Nothin’ more.” He wrinkled his nose and went back to whittling the post he’d been working on before continuing. 

“That ain’t home. Home is the people inside it. Laura, the kids.”

“Must be nice.” James offered, almost shyly, and Barton looked at him sharply. 

“You got no one?” The older man asked, tentative and with eyes focused on his work once more. He held little to no expectation of an answer, and was not disappointed. In fact, if he wasn’t attuned to hearing the little things in life - a trait that people seemed to pass him over with, forgetting that a man who has hearing issues listens all the better when he can - he would have missed James’ answer altogether. 

“Not anymore.”

\------

After a month of gentle but persistent nagging, he finally allowed Laura at his hair. 

“Just a tidy up,” She promised, throwing an old beach towel around his shoulders and setting him firmly on a dining chair she’d dragged to the middle of the kitchen. James sat down, eyebrows knit together and warily eyeing the scissors in her hands as she brandished them. 

“Don’t you believe it, Jimmy.” Barton called over his shoulder from the sink, elbow deep in washing up. “She told my brother that once, now he’s bald and he don’t visit us no more.” Laura swatted him on the ass with a towel she’d snatched from where it was laid over the , laughing and - after a moment - James laughed too. 

Laura shot him a pleased look before she turned her attention back to the man on the chair in front of her, and Clint dried off his forearms with his ass rested against the porcelain of the sink and considered the change in the man who was now patiently tilting his head to one side. Still quiet, still thoughtful, still clearly hiding a multitude of life story that Barton had little to no interest in hearing. 

He was looser now, more relaxed. Still covered up that arm when he was anywhere close to the house, but out in the field at least he’d strip it off and tuck it by one sleeve into his back pocket. Using it occasionally, as Barton did, as a sweat rag across his forehead, before shoving it back in his jeans. 

Laura bent at the waist and giggled as she held onto James’ head and tried her damnedest to cut in a straight line. Made him laugh again by threatening him with a pudding basin the way she cut Cooper’s hair if he didn’t hold still for her. Nate, having crawled to plonk his fat diapered behind in the middle of James’ feet, chuckled and rolled his head back as he gazed up at the man above him. 

“She’s done it before,” Barton warned, corralling Lila into drying the dishes for him and throwing open the cupboards so Cooper could stack the plates. “Don’t underestimate a little lady with a sharp edge in her hand, James.” 

\------

“She’s in pup.” Barton said critically, looking at the collie dog and the way her belly hung low underneath her. “Be a week or two, maybe, then we’ll have puppies runnin’ around the place.” Lila, at his side, clasped her hands together and squealed in excitement. Barton dropped a hand to her head and ruffled her hair affectionately. Cooper, a little older and attempting to be cooler about it, merely sniffed and turned away, but Clint could see the flash of interest in his son’s eyes as well. 

James grinned, and Barton, hunkering down and letting the collie sneak into his chest with a warm lick that started at his chin and ended around his eyeline, reflected that it was probably the most genuine smile he’d seen on the other man’s face. 

Kid might not know a bull from a goat, and had struggled to put a fence post in the ground the right way up, but he liked dogs. 

\------

“Where’d you see service?”

James’ head shot up and he looked at Barton with something a little like alarm before his carefully arranged mask fell across his features again. He huffed out a small laugh, dropping his shoulders and looking up at the other man before dragging a hand through sweat-slick hair. 

“That obvious, huh?” He said, a rare smile on his face. “You a military man, Clint?”

“Something like that.” Barton answered easily, swinging his shovel upwards and resting it across his shoulders, hanging each forearm over it and squinting across to the farmhouse where he could see Laura decanting homemade pink lemonade into a large jug, Lila bobbing at her side, eager for a glass. “Not an easy habit to break, soldier.”

“No.” James answered with a nod of his head, swinging his pickaxe and thudding it firmly into the ground, splitting it open further so that Barton could heft his shovel in. “No, it’s not.”

“You Special Ops?” Barton asked curiously, not expecting a straight answer. James straightened up and tossed strands of hair back from his face, wiping the back of his right forearm across his forehead and leaving a wide dirt mark over his sunburned skin before considering the question. 

“Something like that.”

\------

“But Skye?” Lila turned horrified eyes on her father. “You can’t leave her out there.”

Barton shook his head and put a large hand to his little girl’s head, pulling her in close to his stomach and shooting a glance at his wife, who looked back at him with a resigned gaze from the kitchen. “Lila, kid…” He said slowly, caressing her hair as she gripped at him. “It’s not safe out there.” The windows were already rattling in their frames, and he wondered how many roof tiles he’d need to start replacing come morning. 

The hot, humid summer had built and built into an unbearable heat until, finally, it had broken into a sweaty thunderstorm. Good for the flowers, not so good for the little collie dog that had upped and ran at the first crack of lightning that split across the sky and lit up the valley. Not so good for the pups that were squirming in her belly, and about ready to make their entrance to the world. 

He could see the old willow tree out by the pond bending in the wind, bending so far that the trail of limbs that usually just brushed the surface of the water were practically kissing it. Barton shook his head again, sorrowful. It had been a long time since the county had seen a storm like this one, and there would be more damage in the morning than he would know what to do with. 

“If it’s not safe for you daddy, it’s not safe for Skye-” Lila protested, tears threatening to form in the corners of her eyes. She clutched onto him hard, right around his middle, and Barton squeezed his own eyes tight shut and wished this wasn’t part of country life. Sometimes, he could swear that being in the Avengers was the easier job. 

“I’ll go.” 

Barton looked up to find James, risen to his feet and shrugging on a jacket already. He opened his mouth to protest but found it falling shut again at the look on the other man’s face. James flexed his shoulder, the one that had been forged in a laboratory somewhere, and with that he was on his heel and the front door banging shut after him. 

They waited. 

Laura, wanting to send the kids to bed but knowing there would be no hope in getting them settled with the storm still raging and James out in it, hunting for the little collie dog. Barton, squeezing at her hand and turning the radio up louder in a poor attempt to mask the creak of the house as the wind battered against it. 

The kids, curled together on the couch and closer for the first time in a few years, worry pulling them into each other in a way that would have made Barton smile to see it, had it not been under the circumstances. Rain lashed against the windows, hammering over the glass in an unrelenting rhythm and Barton resisted the urge to slam his hand onto the dining room table. 

“You shouldn’t have let him go,” Laura said in a low voice, eyes half on her husband and half on the clock that hung crooked on the kitchen wall. James had been gone a long forty minutes, and Barton was starting to get an itch in his feet to follow. He forced his shoulders into a nonchalant shrug. 

“He’s a grown man, Laur,” He whispered back. “A grown man that’s seen worse ‘n a storm in his lifetime by the look of him. What was I supposed to do, tie him to a chair?”

“Might have slowed him down.” She suggested lightly, a small smile tugging at her lips, though poorly concealed worry still coloured the rest of her expression. 

“Pretty sure it wouldn’t’ve,” He grinned back, forcing it onto his face . “You ain’t seen that left arm he’s packin’.” Barton let his gaze fall to the couch, where - despite all attempts to stay awake - the kids were tumbled together with closed eyes.

The clock ticked, and Laura finally rose from the kitchen table with a frustrated huff to boil the kettle once more, when the front door banged open. Framed in the doorway, dripping water like he’d been doused in the stuff and clutching his jacket to his chest with one arm and swinging a bucket in the other, was James. 

“Oh-” Laura exclaimed, a hand to her mouth and narrowly avoiding dropping the tea cup she’d been hanging onto with the other. Barton rose from his chair, careful not to scrape it back against the hardwood floor and wake the kids. James tossed his head back, water clinging to the long dark hair he still wore, and the collar of his jacket gaped a little, revealing a black and white head and a wet nose that worked its way between his chin and chest. 

“Sorry,” The dark haired man murmured as Barton moved towards him. “She was in the middle of birthing when I found her, couldn’t leave ‘til she was finished.” He lifted the bucket carefully and, nestled into an old plaid shirt Clint had donated to him a few months back, were three wriggling puppies, mewling for their mama. 

“You sleep in the spare room tonight.” Laura said forcefully, having arrived at Barton’s side, glancing down at the contents of the bucket and resting a tender hand to Skye’s head which blinked sleepily from James’ chest. “No arguments, mister.”

“First time I ever heard that said as a positive thing.” Barton said with a wink and a chuckle as he threw a clean towel from the back of one of the kitchen chairs at James’ head. 

\------

It had been five months and thirteen days when things collapsed. 

The Quinjet touched down in the field up on the ridge, carefully away from prying eyes and also the main house. The Avengers knew better than to draw too much attention to the Barton stronghold. Clint, ears sensitive to the familiar sound of supersonic jet engines, poked his head from the dormer window at the top of the house, and spotted Steve making his way down the hill. 

“Better get the bacon on, Laur, and plenty of it,” he hollered down the stairs around his toothbrush before spitting toothpaste into the bathroom sink and continuing. “We got a Captain to feed.”

Steve was sat at the table, trying to persuade Laura that he didn’t need any more sausages than she’d already tried to feed him, Nate cradled happily into the crook of his left arm and Cooper leaning across the table to ask excitedly if he’s brought the shield this time, when James throws open the door. 

He’s whistling a cheerful tune that dies on his lips as he stops stock-still at the entrance to the kitchen and stares at the big blond soldier taking up half the breakfast table. Steve for his part takes a moment to catch on and then he too has a dropped jaw and a puzzled look on his face before he manages to collect himself and speak up. 

“Bucky?”


End file.
